Panama Pictures and More
3 Jun
Here are the pictures from Panama. Click the bird for more.
I wish I could say that I haven’t been writing here because my life is boring and there’s nothing worth saying. But when has boring ever stopped a blogger from writing about themselves?
I haven’t been writing because I learned some things about myself in Panama that I’m not real happy about. In past adventures I was always the shit talking, tough as nails, world-weary guy who could travel forever. Fixed addresses, owning more than could fit in a pack, speaking the local language — that was all for other people. I was going to circumnavigate the globe and never stop. I was going to crawl into every strange and exotic hole only to emerge when I had a story worth telling.
Traveling is a lot of things but it isn’t easy. No one ever talks about it being lonely or boring or scary. No one talks about having days with nothing to do or how after a week of sleeping in a hostel dormitory you kill yourself if it meant five minutes of peace away from the awkward blowjob the guy on the top bunk is getting from his girlfriend while you’re trying to sleep on the bottom bunk.
If we do talk about this stuff, it usually ends up sounding hopelessly romantic. Or at least, it does to me because there’s some lose wire in my head that tells me that it’s better to be miserable than bored. I’d rather the experience be scary than dull. I’d rather have the story than the money. If I had to list my insecurities they wouldn’t be about my clothes or my appearance or the car I drive. I’m afraid of being one of those dull, boring people you meet around the water cooler who has nothing to talk about except what was on TV last night. I’m afraid of missing out on an experience, of being left behind.
And even though I’m pretty fucking far from that person, insecurities are rarely rational. Which makes them worse because no matter how many times I tell myself this isn’t true, or show myself how far I’ve come from the office life, part of me still thinks I’ll end up in some Monday morning ego session where people in badly fitting business casual khakis talk about things they don’t fully understand and we’re all nice to each other because of the almighty label of ‘professionalism’ and not because we actually like or respect each other.
But at some point in Panama, the stories stopped sounding romantic and I found myself craving routine over adventure. I found myself thinking about how nice it would be to indulge in all those things I had sort of held my nose up at before. Suddenly, I wasn’t fucking hardcore. I wasn’t handling it or maintaining. I was just another kid who wanted to run home the minute things got too hard.
It really sucks when the reality of a situation smashes through all the carefully maintained assumptions we hold about the person we think we are.
And so I haven’t been writing here because who wants to engage in excessive naval gazing and endless introspection when they’ve looked under the hood to find something that they didn’t like?
But I’m learning to deal with it. And I’m starting to get more comfortable with the idea of publishing here again instead of obsessively writing things down in my little black moleskine. I’m realizing that the path to being that person, the one I want to be, lies in getting out there and confronting all the shit I don’t like. Not hiding from it, alone in my apartment behind the dull glaze that a bottle of bourbon and cable TV can provide.
“But at some point in Panama, the stories stopped sounding romantic and I found myself craving routine over adventure.”
Do you think it’s because what you were searching for in Panama was never really there? Your thought resonates with me so much because it’s exactly what I was thinking while traveling. Though at least for me 10 countries in one year made me realize it was all just rationalizing the fact that I wanted to escape, instead of examining what it is I really wanted out of myself and life. Don’t get me wrong, it was absolutely worth it, but I’m just speculating that it could be one those “the treasure was here all along” moments?
It’s crazy how much I’m identifying with your struggle right now, Ben. I did two months in Colombia, throwing time and money down the faucet chasing some kind of dream I couldn’t even begin to describe, ignoring everything I knew about myself and why it was a bad idea. Traveling just isn’t all that interesting to me anymore. Once in awhile, I feel the urge to go look at strange scenery for awhile. It lasts only as long as it takes for me to remember how much of a pain in the ass it was.
I went, I saw. Now I just want to live my life. If I travel again, it will be to visit friends I have on the Internet whom I’d never meet otherwise.
I hope you do start posting here more regularly again because you are an excellent writer and I really enjoy reading your stuff.
Good luck to you!
I came here to write something, but Sean just wrote it for me. Good to have you back, Ben. You’ve been missed.
I’m of the opinion that sometimes “no longer hardcore” actually means “growing the fuck up,” and that you haven’t lost your edge if you’re simply using it to cut something you weren’t expecting to cut.
Not always. Sometimes.
I lived in Panama for almost 3 years (2005-2008). It was awesome when I first went there, but I feel like it went way downhill and is a very different place now. I live in Guatemala these days, and I get what you mean–it fucking gets old. You don’t always want to be the outsider, which you will always be. You’re always a novelty to the people from the region (and at home), and I think being that person attracts a lot of insecure and annoying travelers.
“Wow I can afford a maid here, I can buy 75 cent beer. I know how awesome the world is now.”
There comes a point when you can no longer romanticize a certain place. In Latin American there is no customer service, and there’s a lot of rudeness, ignorance, swindling, and a class system. There is this huge narcissistic bubble that surrounds each capital city and the “rich” think it’s their own special Hollywood. Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of good but…Sometimes I want to sit in starbucks with the black rimmed glasses that I will buy and drink fancy coffee and nobody would give a flying fuck. It would be a little pleasure in life that is taken for granted, I think. So, I think I know what you mean, though what I say is 100% subjective.
WOW. It’s strange how sometimes the things/wisdom we NEED to hear or read appear in the most unexpected places. I stumbled on this blog through Tucker Max’s, and I read this gem and these comments. As I mull a move to Costa Rica, this was the kind of thing my brain didn’t want to process but needed to.
When I bought my one-way to Costa Rica a year ago it was for the sense of adventure, to get away from what I thought was wrong in the states. There’s no place on earth that’s going to quell any sort of anxiety for that. I remain here partly because I’ve managed to make a few friends, and it’s a great jumping off point to go further south, but now it’s almost moreso that I’m nervous to return. What’s changed, what are my friends up to, who’s got what dead end job, and will I be able to fit back in?
I will find myself on a deserted beach with a friend from Norway, or England, wherever, and still relate to a book I’ve read or a movie I’ve seen. I went to Paris to try and see what Hemingway and Miller and Fitzgerald saw in it, and all could do was eat the food and get snubbed by locals. I went to China and Mongolia to find out how life in general goes out there. Not my jam. From all of these experiences all I can say I’ve “learned” is that at least I’ve done these things, and will not have the what if, I wonder, feeling.
It’s a little different from the friends in Denver who have never left Colorado, or my family in NY who’d never dream of leaving the “center of the world” as they put it. But those are also the people seemingly content with what, who and where they are. I’m still wondering what I’m doing, and where I’m going.
It’s good to see that there are others who share this with me…